


Coffee and Tea, or, a Prelude to What Promised to Be a Very Interesting Future

by azurish



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Old Fic Repost/Import, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Eleventh Doctor runs into a future regeneration of the Master's.  What follows provides him with a very interesting glimpse of the future as well as a confirmation that yes, Time Lords do indeed have perfect sartorial instincts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coffee and Tea, or, a Prelude to What Promised to Be a Very Interesting Future

            They were eating breakfast together. The Doctor took a moment to try to wrap his head about it, then gave up. He needed a hot (make that _scalding_ ) cup of tea before he thought about anything, to be honest.  That had been the reason he’d come to this café in twenty-third century New York in the first place: he had many fond recollections of their tea’s miraculous powers of restoration. He’d spent the last two days straight running through a seemingly endless series of identical quarries as he navigated the warren that second century Raxicoricofallipatorians called a royal palace, searching for the king so that he could stop the grand vizier (who was, distressingly enough, one of the Slitheen clan’s ancestors – was there something about that family that made them predisposed towards evil?) from blowing up the planet.  At this point, he felt that he really  _deserved_  that cup of tea, and so he’d put all other world-saving expeditions on hold and headed off for a nice cuppa.

            The Master had entered the café about two minutes after the Doctor had, and had done a double-take, blinked at him for a few moments, and then walked over and sat down next to him. At closer quarters, he looked almost as blearily exhausted as the Doctor felt, though he, at least, had a fully-tied bow tie. The Doctor’s had gotten untied at some point during the last forty-eight hours and he hadn’t had the energy or motivation to do it back up.

            “Bow ties are cool,” the Doctor mumbled, trying to think of something to say to this man who was the obviously not-dead future incarnation of his best enemy, suspicious goatee and dark blue eyes and black suit and all.

            “Yes,” the Master replied, nodding in agreement, which made the Doctor feel quite righteous about his bow tie. After all, the other Time Lord agreed with him. Which meant all the Time Lords who currently existed in this universe considered bow ties a smart fashion choice. And obviously, if anyone was going to be right about sartorial decisions, it would clearly be a Time Lord, as Time Lords were genetically predestined to have good fashion sense (the Doctor’s mother had told him so when he was a young Gallifreyan and refusing to wear the stupid robes, anyways, and the Doctor had believed it for eleven regenerations and wasn’t going to start doubting it now).

            They sat there in silence until the waitress, who was wearing an annoyingly bright outfit (apparently all the rage at this point in Earth history), appeared. The Doctor ordered tea. The Master ordered coffee.

            After the waitress jangled away, the Doctor raised an eyebrow, hoping it conveyed his distaste and surprise that the Master would order coffee, as well as, possibly, a general “what are you doing here?” vibe.

            “Not everyone is quite as obsessed as you are with mimicking the customs of the British members of this benighted planet, Doctor,” the Master said, catching at least the first meaning behind the raised eyebrow.

            “If it’s so ‘benighted’, what are you doing here?” the Doctor asked at last, giving up on Delphonic eyebrow communication.

            “Obviously, I am not here by choice,” the Master replied.

            “Then what _are_ you doing here?” the Doctor asked, wishing desperately that the waitress would come back with the tea so that he could think properly and possibly figure things out without having to rely on questions with embarrassingly obvious answers he just couldn’t think of right now. It was probably the Master’s coffee that was taking so long, anyways, he thought irritably.

            “What does it look like?” the Master replied, the irritation in his voice belying his attempt to present a nonchalant front. “I’m marooned here for the moment – though, I assure you, it’s only a temporary inconvenience. You ought to be along very shortly to pick me up.”

            “What do you mean, I ought to be along very shortly to pick you up?” the Doctor demanded, feeling like the answer should be obvious. Only, of course, it wasn’t. Tea, where _was_ the tea?

             The Master paused, looked him in the eyes, and then spoke very, very slowly, as if the Doctor were still an Academy student. “You – as in, you from the future – will be along very shortly to pick me up. It appears that your TARDIS has broken down again, though, so it may take you some time. Really, you must start taking better care of her. It would save me a great deal of trouble, as well as unnecessary meetings with past versions of yourself, which are quite dull when compared to spending time with the real you.”

            “ _I’m_ the real me,” the Doctor replied indignantly.

            “No, I’m afraid you aren’t yet,” the Master replied easily. “You’re not half so interesting yet.”

            “I am _very_ interesting!”

            “I’m sure you think so,” the Master said, his voice highly condescending. The Doctor scowled, but without much feeling; he was too tired to dredge up the energy required for complex emotions.

            The Doctor was attempting to come up with a witty riposte when the familiar _vworp vworp_ of a TARDIS dematerializing sounded throughout the room. It definitely wasn’t the Doctor’s TARDIS, which was parked in the back of the room, which meant …

            Right on cue, the Master stood up. “That would be me,” he said, to no one in particular. And then, “I’ll be seeing you soon, I believe.” He leaned down, and, with the perfunctory air of one who has kissed a significant other before leaving a hundred times before, brushed his lips against the Doctor’s. The Doctor stuttered back in his chair in surprise, nearly tipping over, but the Master merely turned and left the café, closing the door carefully behind him. The Doctor watched him as he walked away down the street, and then he turned a corner and was lost to view.

            It wasn’t until the waitress arrived with both coffee and tea that the Doctor realized the Master hadn’t paid for his beverage, and wasn’t going to be consuming it, which meant not only was the Doctor forced to pay for him, the whole thing was going to waste.

            “ _Typical_ ,” he mumbled, but without much heart, as he sipped his tea and tried to explain this morning’s events away as some sort of really weird fluke of alternate universe timelines. Or something.

            The words “I’ll be seeing you soon”, though, rang in his head, long after he left the café and settled down for a much-needed rest (screw trying to wake up with a cup of tea) in his room in the TARDIS.

            The future looked like it might be interesting.

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of an old work from my LJ, because I thought I probably ought to move some things over. (If you compare this with the original, there are a few small edits, but it's mostly the same.) Eleven's regeneration is making me nostalgic - I wrote this shortly after Eleven's first season ... :')
> 
> The bow tie thing was shamelessly stolen/"inspired by" a conversation on Best Enemies, in which it was discerned that yes, Ainley!Master was wearing a bow tie in Survival. (And the Delphonic eyebrow language is absolutely a Three reference.)


End file.
